The sound made Jarek cringe inwardly. But he took up the Whacker and rose to grab one of the support handles by the open hatch anyway.
Drogan came to stand beside him. Both of them listened with sharpened senses to the steadily approaching series of thuds, crashes, and eager snarling sounds as Harga hounded after his prey.
Closer. Closer.
The thuds of huge, thundering paws abruptly ended.
Then Harga’s pale, hairless bulk came flying clear over the roadside greenery to slam down on the pavement behind them.
The beast shook itself, locked burning eyes on Jarek and Drogan, and surged after them with another sonorous bellow.
Jarek braced himself as the truck cornered into a rightward turn on the winding road. He prepared his swing as they leveled out, cocking the Whacker back in the space outside the truck and—
The truck whipped left, skirting off the road and startling his balance. A few jostles and bumps. They cruised by a pile of scraps that looked like the remainder of a ramshackle wall. Then the truck cut back onto the road. Jarek didn’t have time to wonder about the maneuver.
Harga was closing.
Jarek leaned back out and raised the Whacker, praying to the gods the support handle would hold when he swung.
Harga picked up his pace, his crimson eyes and flapping jowls radiating eager anticipation at the sight of the challenge.
Twenty-five yards.
Fifteen.
Jarek was cocking his sword for the swing when Rachel’s staff jutted out past him.
There was a low thrum of power, and the tree trunks of Harga’s front legs tripped back under his charging body as if they’d encountered an invisible barrier right next to the remnants of the scrap wall.
The Kul proceeded to eat a patched section of pavement with ground-shaking force. A patched section of pavement that inexplicably detonated upon his impact.
A relieved sound of victory barked its way from Jarek’s throat as he realized they must’ve just passed the mines Rachel had been worried about.
The relief, though, was short-lived as Harga ambled to his massive feet, clearly not incapacitated. The Kul rose to his hind legs, revealing a bloody mess of scorched underbelly, and gave a furious roar. Then he slammed back to the pavement and lumbered after them.
Harga’s pace, at least, seemed to have been reduced by the explosion.
Another cry from above—one Jarek thought he’d already heard that day—announced that their worries weren’t even close to over yet, though.
Drogan leaned out to take a look overhead.
Jarek was about to join him when the truck weaved, maneuvering around what must’ve been a second set of mines.
At whatever he saw, Drogan gripped the top edge of the open hatch without a word and flipped himself out and up to the truck roof with surprising agility.
Jarek poked out to see the distant shape of the gargoyle Kul’Ogrin gliding toward them on leathery wings.
“Well that guy looks like fun,” Rachel muttered as she appeared at his side, staff held at the ready in Harga’s direction.
“Yeah,” Jarek said, “and he’s sporting serious murder wood for Armin’s killer.”
Rachel glanced at him. “Well, aren’t you lucky?”
“Would it be cheesy if I said ‘now that I found you’?”
“Yes.” She leveled her staff, brow furrowed in concentration, and a section of road Harga had slowed to eye suspiciously exploded in a booming flash of fire, shrapnel, and dust. “Yes, it would.”
Harga padded a few steps back, sniffed at the air a few times, and cut a wide berth around the exploded road, trotting up the adjacent hill instead of following them into a wide roundabout.
For a few moments, there was nothing but heavy tension and squealing tires. Then they leveled out of the turn, and Harga’s lumbering form crested the hill after them, having gained significant ground on his shortcut.
“Sword, Jarek Slater!” Drogan called above.
“Seriously, Stumpy?” Jarek called back. “We’re kinda busy down h—”
“Give me the cursed Whacker!” Drogan boomed.
Rachel nodded, hefting her staff to point out they weren’t without defenses.
Jarek flipped the blade reverse-grip, slapped the power on, and thrust it up to Drogan.
The raknoth snatched it roughly and tore it straight into a hard rising sweep.
There was a flash of blue light and an ugly screech, then something—presumably Ogrin or Drogan—hit the top of the truck and thudded diagonally across with a series of groaning impacts that left the roof half caved in.
Jarek tightened at what sounded too much like a Drogan-sized object bouncing over the edge of the truck roof, but then the Whacker punched through the ceiling at an awkward angle, and a pair of impacts rocked the side of the truck as if Drogan were using the blade to hold on.
All the troops in the compartment scurried away from the thud, weapons trained that way. And not a second too soon.
A pair of challenging roars shook the trailer. Three claws tore through the wall like tin foil, gray leathery fingers looking for purchase. The strong gray arm got a grip inside, and the section of wall beside it and below the sword crumpled a foot inward, as if Ogrin had body-slammed a dangling Drogan into it.
Ahead, Harga had renewed his charge, emboldened by whatever he’d just seen.
Jarek glanced between the incoming Kul and the top of the truck, debating.
“Go!” Rachel said. “I’ve got this.”
She wasn’t just saying it either.
On foot, Rachel might’ve been hard-pressed to slow Harga down enough to make a difference. From the back of a speeding truck, though, each of her telekinetic trip-ups bought them real breathing room.
So Jarek turned his back to Harga and the open hatch, grabbed the top edge of the truck trailer, and jumped.
The metal of the truck groaned and shifted beneath his fingers, but it held enough for him to flop up to the top with about one-hundredth of Drogan’s style.
Behind, Harga growled in frustration.
Ahead, Drogan cried out in pain.
Ogrin had his right shoulder in a vise grip, his long gray thumb driven deep into Drogan’s chest.
Somehow, Drogan still managed to throw a few awkward uppercuts into Ogrin’s protruding lower jaw with the hand that wasn’t anchoring him to the truck by the Whacker’s hilt.
Ogrin paid the feeble blows no mind—just leaned in as if intending to tear Drogan’s head from his shoulders with nothing but his misaligned teeth.
Jarek didn’t wait around to see how that would work out.
He darted forward, dropped down, and slipped an arm around Ogrin’s throat in a choke hold. Ogrin growled and struggled, but his tremendous strength didn’t do him nearly as much good while he was dangling from the side of a truck by one hand.
Jarek grabbed Ogrin’s wrist and began trying to pry the Kul’s enormous hand from Drogan’s shoulder.
With a snarl, Drogan grabbed Ogrin’s wrist just above Jarek’s hand and added his own strength.
They were starting to make some headway when a Resistance soldier poked up from the passenger-side window of the truck cab.
For a second, he gaped at Ogrin, then he turned to Jarek and shouted over the wind, “Get down!” pointing emphatically ahead.
It was only then Jarek realized how close they were to the low entrance tunnel cut in the side of the mountain.
Shit.
And was that a…?
No time.
Jarek jutted his chin forward. “Just keep driving!”
Turning back to the struggle at hand, Jarek caught Drogan’s eye and jerked his head left in a sign he hoped the raknoth would understand to mean Let’s toss this a-hole overboard!
“One,” Drogan called, apparently catching on.
Ahead, the tunnel seemed to be approaching faster and faster.
“Two,” Jarek added, planting his right foot to Ogrin’
s shoulder.
Fifty feet. Thirty feet.
“THREE!”
He wrenched and kicked all at once. On the other side, Drogan did the same.
Ogrin’s claws tore free from Drogan’s shoulder and the truck alike, grasping at Jarek’s leg and then thin air as the Kul took involuntary flight, bound straight for the rocky wall at the side of—
The tunnel!
Jarek threw himself flat against the truck as the lip of the semi-circular tunnel whooshed by overhead.
A bellow followed after them. Harga’s he thought. Then there was a momentous scraping sound and the daylight disappeared as something heavy boomed at the mouth of the tunnel.
Jarek raised his head and saw a solid-looking door had dropped down like a guillotine blade to bar the tunnel entrance upon their passing.
Something—probably Harga—hit the door with a violent crash and a metallic groan that told Jarek it probably wouldn’t hold indefinitely if the Kul was determined.
Despite that, he laid his head back to the truck and allowed himself a few moments of nothing but blissful gulps of air in the dim tunnel lighting, listening to the rumble and hum of the convoy engines.
Ahead, Drogan began to chuckle.
Jarek was surprised at first but soon found himself chuckling too, giddy with the excitement of their narrow survival.
“You guys having fun up there?” Rachel’s voice called from the back of the truck.
“The battle was well-fought, Rachel Cross,” Drogan called back as if it were all the answer she should need.
“Yeah…” Jarek added. “Total giggle fest up here.”
Overhead, the tunnel ceiling and its intermittent lights weren’t quite as low-hanging as he’d originally worried they’d be. He was contemplating sitting up when there was a wrenching screech from Drogan’s direction.
Jarek looked around in time to see the Whacker thud down beside him.
“Come, Jarek Slater,” Drogan said, clawing his way along the side of the truck toward the open rear hatch. “We are not safe yet.”
A solid thud and the groan of protesting metal from the direction of the tunnel entrance punctuated the statement quite nicely.
Jarek grabbed his sword, maneuvered it awkwardly in the limited space onto the connectors on his back, and scrambled on all fours to the back of the ruined truck.
The rim of the hatch tore free as he swung himself in through the open rear, but Rachel and one of the Resistance soldiers caught on and dragged him in before he could lose his balance and tumble out.
Drogan crawled in a second later from around the side of the truck.
At the sight of Drogan’s dimming red eyes, Jarek remembered what he’d briefly glimpsed above the mouth of the tunnel.
“Was that a dead raknoth back there?”
Rachel and Drogan exchanged an uncomfortable look.
“Any chance our friends ahead can all stow the red eyes?” Rachel asked Drogan.
The raknoth’s gaze went distant for several seconds. Then, “It is likely too late for that.”
“Shit.” Rachel sighed. “Well, hopefully Dola’s paying attention in there.”
“That’s the leader?” Jarek asked. “The raknoth you mentioned?”
Rachel nodded, looking worried. “Yeah. I just didn’t get to finish explaining the part where his people don’t know what he is”—she grimaced—“and that they kinda have a religious hatred of all things raknoth.”
Jarek thought back to the charred form hanging over the tunnel entrance. “Yeah, no kidding.”
“Let’s just…” Rachel said.
“Behave casually?” Drogan asked with the faintest of smirks, his appearance now fully human.
Rachel rubbed at her forehead in weary exasperation then looked up as the truck began to slow.
Drogan hopped swiftly out and headed for the head of the convoy.
“Casual it is, then,” Jarek said, hopping out and turning to offer Rachel a hand down. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Rachel took his hand and hopped down, grumbling something about how they were about to find out.
Ahead, the convoy had arrived at a wide elbow in the tunnel. Commander Daniels and a grim-looking Alaric had climbed out of their vehicles to join Drogan in approaching the wall that Jarek realized at a second glance was actually a door.
Behind them, most of the soldiers were cautiously unloading from the vehicles, murmuring to each other and shooting worried looks back at the pounding sounds echoing after them from the direction of the tunnel entrance.
The raknoth, apparently having gotten the message from Drogan, lingered in the vehicles, keeping a low profile.
“Come on, people!” Rachel cried, waving at the door as she caught up to Drogan. “Open sesame! What are you waiting for? Zach? Dillard?”
Granted, Jarek wasn’t a pro at secret handshake protocols, but the hidden compartments that popped open to reveal a pair of nasty-looking rotary autocannons didn’t seem like an encouraging sign.
“I knew there was something off about you, lady,” said a male voice from a hidden speaker somewhere above the door, “but running around with fucking vamps?”
Drogan held his hands up, suddenly looking meeker than Jarek had ever thought to see in his life. “What are you talking about, man?” he cried in a voice that was decidedly un-Drogan-ly. “Those things are after us and our friends! You have to—”
“Cut the shit!” the speaker-voice cried. “I saw the red eyes on the cams out there, Derek. You can’t lie to me, demon. I’ll be damned if—”
“Open the door, you fool!” Drogan roared, dropping all appearances. “We are your only hope of surviving what’s outside.”
The autocannons began spinning up.
Jarek started to step protectively ahead of Rachel, then, noting she had her bullet-catcher on, sidled in on her flank instead.
“Zach,” Rachel said, hands held open and unthreatening. “You know I can decommission your guns. But we’re gonna need ’em. There’s good reason for all of this, but for now, you need to let us in. Ask Dillard if you have to, he’ll tell you the same.”
“Bullshit,” Zach snarled. “I’ll die before—”
“Zach!” Rachel shouted in a tone that could’ve shriveled cold stone. “Open the fucking door or I’ll tear it down and—”
They all jerked to attention as the steady pounding echoes gave way to a mournful wrenching sound from the distant tunnel entrance.
“The gate has fallen,” Drogan growled.
Rachel whipped back to the enormous vault door. “Zach…”
“Open the door, Rachel Cross,” Drogan said.
Behind them, the raknoth were piling out of the vehicles now, preparing to meet their coming masters.
Rachel was extending a hand toward the enormous door when a series of thick pops rang out, clearly surprising her, and the door began inching open.
If not Rachel, though…
“It’s taken care of,” said a new speaker-voice, also male but smoother, “though I cannot say I’m pleased to see you return with the enemy on your heels.”
“That makes two of us,” Rachel growled under her breath. Then, louder, “Let’s go, people! Through the big scary door!”
No one argued. They just hustled their asses off, raknoth and human alike, to squeeze past the maddeningly slow-opening door and into the open room beyond. It was a tight fit, but with at least two bellowing rakul storming down the tunnel after them, they found a way to make it work.
Jarek, Rachel, Drogan, and Krogoth were the last ones in before the huge vault door began its equally slow swing shut.
“Can we hurry this shit up?” Jarek asked.
“Sincerest apologies if my fortress isn’t up to your standards, human,” someone—this Dola, probably—growled under his breath a little ways back.
Jarek was too distracted by Harga’s bulk charging into view to worry about it.
Rachel pointed her staff through the slowl
y-closing gap, and Harga hit an invisible wall. Jarek slipped an arm around Rachel, recognizing the wobbly knees of channeling fatigue, but she managed to hold long enough for the autocannons to open fire.
The ridiculously large guns didn’t tear the Kul to ribbons like every physical law said they should have, but they sure as hell didn’t seem to tickle, either.
Harga gave a furious roar and darted back the way he’d come.
Rachel withdrew her staff, and the enormous door slammed shut and locked with a long series of decisive clacks.
Dead silence gripped the room, everyone holding their breaths to see if the rakul would simply leave it at that for now. For a long handful of moments, it actually seemed like they might.
Then someone grunted a curse by the control consoles, and the autocannons roared back to life. Through the thick door, their tandem rapid-fire report sounded more like a muffled choir of chainsaws than a pair of automatic weapons.
Jarek nearly jumped when two somethings—Harga and Ogrin, probably—slammed into the door, but its multi-foot-thick steel build was more than a little solid. Left to their leisure, the two Kul might have eventually worked their way through it, but for now, it held with little more than a round of low thuds.
One last muffled roar vibrated the floor, and then the cannons ceased their fire.
“They have retreated,” Krogoth said. “For now.”
Someone let out a relieved cry, and it spread until most of the room was cheering.
Most of the room, that was, except for the raknoth and the commanders and a few of the soldiers who seemed to be realizing what Rachel’s tight expression told Jarek as she met his eyes.
They’d made it to safety.
And now they were trapped here.
24
Rachel had never thought to feel an ounce of remorse about scorning the hospitality of a raknoth—and especially not a fratricidal, cult-leader-ish one at that. Yet as they all stood there in The Complex’s entrance antechamber under Nan’Dola’s bewildered stare, she couldn’t help but feel a touch of pity for the raknoth.
It wasn’t like she and Drogan had merely tracked a bit of mud into the house, after all. They’d brought another hundred-plus mouths in need of food and shelter they already knew Dola didn’t really have.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 104
